FUNNY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 226, 6 January 1911, Page 7

FUNNY READING.

To the Editor. Sir, —Your sub-leaders of yesterday on "An Arbitrary Law,, and "A word About Sharks" provide some very funny ana amusing rending. The first, in which you tell how an attempt to "get at" the Chinese traders had recoiled on the other fellow, reminds one of the traditional inventor who evolved the gun to fire around corners with the result that he lodged the load in what an architect might describe as his posterior elevation; or of the man described by the Psalmist who dug a pit aid fell into it himself. As a lover of old-fashioned English justice, I can only say "Served him right." One who did not know better, would suppose from your story ot Captain Walker, of Honolulu, that fish: ing for shark oil is a new industry, and that this retired master mariner was also a bit of an inventor, inasmuch as lie "claims 10 have discovered a method ot deodorising shark oil."" Why, Sir, this business of catching sharks for their oil lias been a well-known' industry in Queensland waters for over forty years to. my knowledge. Curiously enough, one of the men who first made it a regular industry was that well-known and most delightful master mariner, Captain "Alligator" Walker, who, if he had written his alligator and shark stories as well as he recounted them, might have become as famous as some other first-class liars. He was lucky in saving enough as his share of the famous "Curtis Nugget" from the jaws of another kind of shark to build and equip one of the trimmest and prettiest little schooners I ever saw, especially for catching sharks and making oil. I visited him on board one day after lunch, and his yarns so entranced me that I spent the whole afternoon listening to him. I wonder can your Captain Walker be ;i son of his. The crude oil, which we used to obtain by the simple process of placing the shark's liver — which is of enormous size relatively to the fish —on a sheet of corrugated iron in the sun, has a ready sale for lubricating purposes. When refined, it wai mixed with a small quantity of dugong oil—that wonderful specific for consumption—and thus in the end fatally damaged the reputation of one of the finest remedies known to man. I have lost touch of this industry for thirty years, but I imagine it is still well to the fore, as being highly attractive to a sort of sportsman that one hopes will long continue to blend sport with business and a fine sailorship. Inter alia, one may say that I never knew a man who had large acquaintance with sharks who did not look on them with contempt as being as cowardly as thev are voracious. —I am, etc., ' B. ENROTH.